


Intrusive Thinking:  Meaning

by thejeeperswife



Series: The Stages of Grief and Love [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Childhood Memories, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Falling In Love, Gift of a Rose, Lothering, Redcliffe, bastard son, forehead kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 07:32:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17956259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thejeeperswife/pseuds/thejeeperswife
Summary: Alistair reflects on a rare event during a fireside dinner that makes him question if Astrid might harbor feelings for him as he does for her.An tumblr entry during OC Kissing 2019





	Intrusive Thinking:  Meaning

Alistair’s freckled face still burned like a spotlight staring at the camp’s fire.  Everyone else was asleep based on the snoring flowing from Oghren’s tent and lack of giggling from the women’s tent.  Leliana and Astrid always stayed up a little while longer to gossip, their laughs like a light wind tapping their tent canvas.  Besides, they always played with Leliana’s new nug with twine to wear him out instead of stepping all over them all night.

The bastard quickly volunteered for the first watch.  He needed the time alone to figure out what had happened at dinner.  The growing band of misfits had a filling meal, telling embarrassing stories about their youth to each other.  A few times Morrigan even smirked, an expression Alistair believed the archdemon was really going to destroy the world.  Sten rarely contributed to the conversation until Astrid gave him a bag of cookies she bought in Lothering’s tavern.  Then, the murderous Qunari spoke about children living under the Qun with cookie crumbs falling from his lips.

When it came to Alistair’s turn between mouthfuls of vension stew, he bumbled and shook his head heck no.  Morrigan said some snide remark that the templar dropout never became an adult, thus why he had nothing to say.  Astrid elbowed her friend in the side, then gently smiled.  Her bowl was empty.  She stood to approach the boiling stew over the fire, but took a roundabout way behind the gathered group.  Once she was behind Alistair, he leaned his head  back with a questionable expression.  The Cousland warrior leaned over and kissed his exposed forehead.

“I find his nature endearing.”  Astrid meowed with a gentle smile.  The warrior rarely allowed her internal thoughts and emotions filter through her poise and restrained nature.  This displayed nature and spoken feeling shocked the whole group to silence.  Once her point was made, her moon grey eyes left Alistair’s shock and blushing cheeks to fill her bowl again with stew.

Thank the Maker fire was red and orange or everyone afterward would have seen his glowing flustered face like a torch.  With a hand flick, the Grey Warden reached into his armor chest plate.  The scale metal plates clicked together as his hand rummaged through the lower layers for the object.  His finger felt the stem’s prick, wincing at the needle points.  With a soft and slow tug he withdrew the rose.  Its red petals had opened a little, but still looked still young and alive after weeks trapped between his armor and tunic. 

Alistair almost carried the precious flower around like a dagger on his hip belt until he overheard Leliana tell her new friend outside Lothering about a single blooming rose on a dead bush that told her dream would lead her on a destined path.  Alistair had wondered why there was no leaves or other blooms on that rose bush.  He figured it was just a very late bloom as autumn cooled southern Ferelden.

Yet, the man’s skin still prickled from where the noblewoman’s lips left a definitive mark on his forehead.  It was first skin contact the Grey Wardens ever shared, but demonstrated so much that lingered behind Astrid’s mourning eyes.  The action brought the pinching ache inside his chest to the surface to meet those chapped lips thirsting for water as they yearned possibly for him. 

Twisting the rose between his fingers, Alistair wondered what forehead kisses meant.  A simple kindness or underlining expression of a warming heart that pinched for him just as he constant felt every moment, awake or sleep?  She was a blast of warmth in the frigid Ostagar cold that day they met.  Her moonstone eyes were of that same dear girl who showed him great kindness so long ago. 

Yet, would those angelic eyes still glistened and her lips still wish to kiss his forehead once they reach Redcliffe?  Alistair will need to tell her who he _really_ was.  It will hurt her, wiping away forever that simple smile she gave down at him that evening.  She will know that boy she met in the barn in the dead of winter had lied for so long about his royal background.  Will she understand why he lived in those kennels then?  Or will she be like Isolde and torment him every waking moment?

With one last deep breath, Alistair sniffed the rose.  He will give it to Astrid tomorrow evening.  They will not reach Redcliffe until the day after tomorrow in the afternoon.  Maybe for that short time, she will know his evolving feelings for her.  It will give her a night of warmth and happiness before wrecking it with the deepest secret he held so close.  Tomorrow she will still believe he is just a simple Grey Warden, not his blasted heritage and what it will mean for the future.

Astrid found silly and simple Alistair endearing.  He was anything but simple, but so was she.

And was falling in love with her.  This budding romance—chuckling at his mental pun—began over a decade ago.  Now, he knew it was love as his Moon kissed his forehead.


End file.
